I was watching something or other on TV last night around 8 pm when the sound of the Kelsey Park parakeets' chattering burst through the open window. I went out on the balcony to take a look and found that the sun, just disappearing behind the trees in the park, was creating a lovely golden glow. I grabbed a camera and with a 300 mil lens took a few shots.

Later I loaded the raw files into Lightroom, one of which I cropped to isolate this bird sitting on a slender branch. Now there isn't per se any great intrinsic merit in this picture; the reason I'm posting it is that, later in the edit session, I noticed that the crop size was 1516 x 2273 pixels. It occurred to me that this crop was larger than the full image on my first DSLR — the Canon D30 — that I bought back in March, 2001. The resolution on the D30 was 1440 x 2160 pixels; the crop from this picture is only just over 16% of the full-frame available (5616 x 3744 px) on my current 1Ds Mk III! I printed the crop on a sheet of A4 premium semi-gloss and it looks great. This is a full-frame shot of the same bird (with friend) taken a few minutes earlier that underlines just how much improvement in sensor resolution there has been in a few years.

A couple of weeks ago, downloaded a copy of PersonalBrain. I have been an enthusiastic user of MindManager for some years; I use it in all my work projects for project management, documentation, file organisation and other stuff — I've even used to build parts of my website. MindManager is essentially hierarchical, whereas PersonalBrain allows more freedom to set up relationships and connections, which brings me  neatly to the title of this post.

Connections (Amazon UK, Amazon US) was written 20 years ago by James Burke to accompany a TV series of the same name; it is a fascinating book and was reprinted in paperback only last year. So what's the connection with PersonalBrain? Apparently, JB is a user. The latest newsletter from TheBrain contained a link to a webinar in which he talks about his current work and his use of PersonalBrain. It's about 50 minutes long and worth watching.

ChangeThis is an interesting site. It has been operating since mid-2004, publishing what they entitle manifestos. Apparently, the idea was prompted was by Seth Godin — author of Permission Marketing (Amazon US, Amazon UK) and co-author of Unleashing the Idea Virus (Amazon US, Amazon UK). Their own manifesto states that their objective is to offer thoughtful, rational, constructive arguments about important issues. Subscription is free and each month's collection of manifestos can be read on-line or as downloadable PDF documents. Each manifesto deals with a particular topic and usually runs to about 15-20 pages (though some can be longer), presented in the very readable, ChangeThis style — why do so many people insist on producing documents in portrait format, which are a pain to read onscreen?

The stable of authors contains some names with impressive pedigrees: Seth Godin (of course), Tom Peters, Bruce Kasanoff...

My experience of ChangeThis, after several years as a subscriber, is that they have done pretty well in achieiving their objective. Each month there is always something worth reading. Some of my favourite manifestos are: The Happy At Work Manifesto, Why Smart People Defend Bad Ideas, and The Low Information Diet: How To Eliminate E-Mail Overload And Triple Productivity In 24 Hours.

I recommend you subscribe and that's why I'm posting this entry in Pisco Sours and Other Good Stuff.

This really did make me laugh... Source unknown... plagiarism rules...

Q: I've heard that cardiovascular exercise can prolong life: is this true?  
A: Your heart is only good for so many beats, and that's it... don't waste them on exercise. Everything wears out eventually. Speeding up your heart will not make you live longer; that's like saying you can extend the life of your car by driving it faster. Want to live longer? Take a nap.  

Q: Should I cut down on meat and eat more fruits and vegetables?
A: You must grasp logistical efficiencies. What does a cow eat? Hay and corn... and what are these? Vegetables. So a steak is nothing more than an efficient mechanism of delivering vegetables to your system. Need grain? Eat chicken. Beef is also a good source of field grass (green leafy vegetable). And a pork chop can give you 100% of your recommended daily allowance of vegetable products.

Q: Should I reduce my alcohol intake?
A: No, not at all. Wine is made from fruit. Brandy is distilled wine, that means they take the water out of the fruity bit so you get even more of the goodness that way. Beer is also made out of grain. Bottoms up! 

Q: How can I calculate my body/fat ratio?
A: Well, if you have a body and you have fat, your ratio is one to one. If you have two bodies, your ratio is two to one, etc.

Q: What are some of the advantages of participating in a regular exercise program?
A: Can't think of a single one, sorry. My philosophy is: No Pain...Good!

Q: Aren't fried foods bad for you?
A: YOU'RE NOT LISTENING!!! ... Foods are fried these days in vegetable oil. In fact, they're permeated in it. How could getting more vegetables be bad for you?

Q: Will sit-ups help prevent me from getting a little soft around the middle?
A: Definitely not! When you exercise a muscle, it gets bigger. You should only be doing sit-ups if you want a bigger stomach.

Q: Is chocolate bad for me?
A: Are you crazy? HELLO! Cocoa beans! Another vegetable!!! It's the best feel-good food around!
 
Q: Is swimming good for your figure?
A:  If swimming is good for your figure, explain whales to me.

Q: Is getting in-shape important for my lifestyle?
A: Hey! 'Round' is a shape!

I hope this has cleared up any misconceptions you may have had about food and diets; and remember:

Life should NOT be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in an attractive and well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways - Chardonnay in one hand - chocolate in the other - body thoroughly used up, totally worn out and screaming 'WOO HOO, What a Ride'  

AND.....

For those of you who watch what you eat, here's the final word on nutrition and health. It's a relief to know the truth after all those conflicting nutritional studies.

1. The Japanese eat very little fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than British.

2. The Mexicans eat a lot of fat and suffer fewer heart attacks than British.

3. The Chinese drink very little red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than British.

4. The Italians drink a lot of red wine and suffer fewer heart attacks than British.

5. The Germans drink a lot of beers and eat lots of sausages and fats and suffer fewer heart attacks than British.

CONCLUSION

Eat and drink what you like. Speaking English is apparently what kills you.

On Tuesday last week, I started a new project that will take me to Manchester for a few weeks. It is the first time in a very long time that I'll be working in the UK, and to be honest, I wasn't entirely looking forward to the prospect of domestic air travel. Going by train would mean getting up before 4 am — they're not paying me enough to do that.  So it's BA from London Gatwick with low expectations about punctuality.

As it turned out, the flight out landed 20 minutes ahead of schedule, but when I arrived at Manchester Airport to come home it was a different story: the flight information screen was already showing a estimated departure 40 minutes later than scheduled.  Well, the first stop was the bar, but I'd arrived too early (not being certain of journey times) to spend the entire time there without potentially unfortunate repercussions. Eventually, of course, I ended up in the gadget shop — Dixon's — browsing the laptop display looking at the ASUS Eee PC. I was the only customer; so the two sales guys came over to give me a demo. They'd obviously played with the Eee PC quite a bit and showed me enough that I decided to buy. The standard price was a penny under £250, but there was a £37 airport discount; so I wasn't risking too much money.

I asked about the XP version, but they said they didn't have and, probably, wouldn't be stocking it as there's a 70 quid premium for the Windows OS, and apparently you don't get anything like the same bundled applications. The model I bought is the 4G: this refers to the 4 gig solid state drive, and there's 512 MB of RAM. My pessimistic expectations of further delays turned out to be unfounded as we hit the ground at Gatwick only 25 minutes later than scheduled. This gave me enough time to have a play before bedtime.

My first impression as I unpacked the box was how heavy the battery is. I have not found any detailed specs, but the website states a weight of 0.92 kg. I reckon the battery must account for half of this. The charger on the other is much the same size and heft as a mobile phone charger. The Eee PC seems quite well made — plastic, obviously, in a range of colours: I chose the conservative Galaxy Black. The first time the unit is switched on, it takes you through a brief initialisation routine to select regional settings, user name and password.

When the system reboots, you are presented with a desktop GUI. The quick start guide gives instructions on how to set up the wireless connection, which was very simple (once I'd remembered whether I was using WEP or WPA security). After a little exploring I discovered the Add/Remove Software option, which offered to update or install a whole bunch of applications and patches. Since the system suggested a reboot was needed after each update, it took quite a long time to complete them all; so I have not really had an opportunity to do anything serious with the Eee PC. Mind you, the cycle time is only just over 30 secs from selecting restart to being presented with the logon screen. I could read and reply to 10 emails and my Vista laptop would still be thrashing the disk to load all the drivers and start-up apps.

The keyboard — obviously, small — is usable enough and the screen bright and clear. I'm not sure of the resolution: the only information I've found so far says, it's 7 inches. I transferred a PDF over the wireless network; the pages are in landscape orientation and are easily readable in full-screen mode. I had a little trouble with the touchpad button, until I worked out that it's a rocker switch — I kept pressing too close to the middle and wondering why the whole unit was moving under the pressure.

There are a goodly number of bundled apps supplied; most notably, OpenOffice. The e-mail client is Mozilla Thunderbird, which was easily configured for IMAP access to my Fastmail system. There are 3 USB 2.0 ports: I plugged in a LaCie mobile drive that I carry for back-up when working away. This mounted and seems to be working OK. There's an SD slot, into which I've plugged an 8 gig SDHC card, and connections for ethernet and an external monitor.

All this for less than £210: it's an impressive package. Still the proof of the pudding... I shall take the Eee PC with me to Manchester next week. I rarely use my laptop on a plane: it's too much hassle with the lack of space and the start-up and closedown time. The flight to Manchester is only 40 minutes, but with the Eee PC ready to go in 30 seconds, I might get something done.

Watch this space!

Regular visitors to rogercavanagh.com may know of the Variations Suite: a set of JavaScripts I wrote that are designed to work with Adobe Photoshop. When Photoshop CS3 was released, I received reports from users that the scripts weren't working correctly. As I was pretty busy with the day job taking me away from home most of the time, I didn't investigate these reports in any detail. Also I thought the upgrade charge that Adobe wanted for CS3 (especially in the UK) was over the top; so I resisted the upgrade for some time. It was only over the last Christmas break that I succumbed. I'm glad I did because otherwise I doubt that I would have started to work with Photoshop Lightroom.

Anyway I tried a few Variations Suite scripts in CS3 and found that they didn't work properly — some worse than others. In the last few days, I've got down to some in-depth investigation and discovered that there is another factor at work: the Windows operating system. I'm using Windows Vista and the UAC (user access control) that Microsoft introduced to provide additional security interferes with reading and writing of settings files. I haven't got to the bottom of all the issues yet, but I'll post information about updates and test versions in this section of the blog.

At present, I can say that Watermark Variations CS2 does not work properly whatever OS you are using.

If you have CS3 and Windows XP, some scripts seem to work fine: for example, B&W Variations, Grain Variations and Tone Variations.

If you have Windows Vista and CS3, I expect problems.

If you are a Mac user, the few comments I have had suggest that most scripts are OK.

My own XP system is hors de combat right now; so if anyone would like to comment on their experience with XP and CS3 that would be great. Mac users, too: please let me know what works.

Please feel free to leave comment here, but you will have to register — I got too much spam and suggestions of illegal sexual practices when I allowed anonymous posting before.

I haven't posted a picture for a few days; so here's something seasonal:

You might think that, just a month away from the first anniversary of moving in here, that the process would be complete... unfortunately, not. For one thing, we are still missing some interior doors. As they were somewhat battered with wheelchair damage, we decided to replace them all. After months of looking, we chose a design with an elegant cherrywood veneer. The new doors had to be made in Spain with a lead time of three months. When they arrived, a week or so back, 2 out of 10 were damaged; so that's further 6-8 weeks delay.

Another job that is still ongoing is the organisation of belongings, particularly, books and papers. Most things are now out of the storage boxes, but not, for the most part arranged for easy retrieval. One small item in this category is a photocopy of a recipe for Pisco Sour. I first came across the delights of Pisco Sour several years ago on a trip to Amsterdam with my mother and brother. We had a great meal one evening at a Peruvian restaurant, which seems to be still running, Casa Peru. Truthfully, I don't remember much about the food, except that we enjoyed it, but I do remember the Pisco Sours.

The trip was to celebrate my mum's 75th birthday: we had a good time and drinking Pisco Sour always reminds me of this... which is why I kept the recipe and why I'm going to record it here (so I can throw one more piece of paper) and why I'm going to use this new subject title as a repository for good stuff of any description for future posts: a Pisco Sour definitely falls into the category Good Stuff.

There's no indication of source on the photocopy that I have; so apologies to the victim of this plagriarism. The ingredients:

* 2 oz Gran Pisco
* 1 oz lemon juice
* 1 teaspoon caster sugar
* Optional extras: a dash of bitters and egg-white

Stick it all in a shaker and vibrate vigourously. The recipe doesn't mention ice, but I'm sure that chilling is a good idea. I still have a bottle of Gran Pisco some where — come the summer... mind you, I still haven't found the cocktail shaker (a plastic one one, bought specifically for the manufacture of Pisco Sours).

P.S. Some pictures from the trip can be found here and here.

Well, at least one...

Kelsey Park has a flock of green parakeets — perhaps, 40 or 50, hard to tell as they never stop still long enough to be counted.  When we moved in last year, we were sleeping in the living room that overlooks the park; the parakeets used to wake us up very early in the morning with their chattering. I don't know where they spent the winter, but the odd one or two have just returned. This little fellow obliging perched on a tree near our balcony long enough for me to grab a camera. (This is quite a tight crop, but, oh, the beauty of 21 megapixels!)

Sorry about the bad pun — couldn't resist it.

There's been a (surprisingly) small fuss recently about plans for three ISPs in the UK — BT, Virgin Media and the Carphone Warehouse — to sell data about their users' browsing habits to a company called Phorm who will use these data to produce targeted on-line marketing. The Register has compiled a dossier of information about this plan, Webwise.

There is, naturally, some disagreement over the legality of Webwise; the proponents claim it's legal (well, they would) while others, such as the Foundation for Information Policy Research argue that it is not on the grounds that it would be impossible to collect the consent of every concerned party — consent to the use of personal data being one of the core principles of European Union data protection.

Virgin Media is my ISP; they naturally put a very positive spin on the Phorm plan. They intimate that I sholuld be able to opt out, if the scheme goes ahead. Personally, I am unconvinced by their assurances and would prefer for Webwise to be killed off. I have registered my objection by signing the petition on the government e-petitions website where I urge you to do the same.

Like many people, I keep a selection of reading material in the loo.  During a recent visit, I was browsing the latest edition of Lenswork magazine, reading an interview with Bruce Barnbaum conducted by Bill Jay. This question and answer caught my attention as offering some interesting ideas.

BJ: When you  decide you want to make a really large print — or conversely, only a small print — what influences your creative process that determines this?

BB: Let's start with the small ones. Assume for the moment that everything is technically perfect, and that I could, if I chose to, enlarge to 30x40" with every one of them. First, I look at the spaces — the tonal spaces — within the image. Sometimes a print has an area that has very little tonal variation within it, It might look great as a small print, but the moment you make it large — even just an 8x10" or 11x14" — those areas with little tonal variation become a large, boring space.

Next, my theory is that prints exist at two viewing distances. People will say there's a "standard viewing distance," but that's not how people view prints. Just watch them. People will look at a photograph from back there, and then they'll come right up to it, just a matter of a few inches; regardless of size they will look at a print from these two distances.

I learned this at an exhibit of Ansel Adams' work after he died. There was a wall-sized mural of Moonrise Over Hernandez and on the second day of the exhibit they had to install a barrier because people were literally coming up and touching it. This photograph was about 13 feet across! You can't see a print that size up close, but people came right up to it. I don't know if they're just looking to see if it's sharp, or what. Whatever the reason, there are always two distances people look at a print. Based on that, I always feel it's necessary to look at my images from two distances. Here is my criterion: If I can look at it from a distance and then come up close but find nothing more too see, it's printed too large. It's not giving me any new information when I come up to it.

There's a third idea that's important. The only way I can really explain this is through a musical analogy. There are some pieces of music that are written for string quartet and others that are written for symphony orchestra. I would not want to hear Beethoven's Fifth Symphony played by a string quartet. I would not want to hear most string quartets played by symphony orchestra. Sometimes you need small scale; sometimes you need a large scale. It's purely subjective. Sometimes I just intuitively feel a print should be small, or another print should be large.

Today's picture is a recent one. It's a nice picture, but unfortunately, it wouldn't pass the technical criteria to be printed very large. This little fellow didn't actually achieve lift-off, but I guess it won't be too long.

At 0700 last Friday, Ikea delivered some shelving — for books and wine  — that I have spent the best part of the last five days assembling in our garage and store-room and, subsequently, filling the shelves from the many boxes untouched since our move (now almost 10 months ago). It's been a while since I did anything like this: if it involves manual labour, my preference is to pay someone else to do it. I have had complaints from muscles I didn't know I had. I had a brief respite on Monday morning. We've got decorators (Polish, unsurprisingly) repainting the common areas of the apartment block. This includes the frontdoor to each apartment; so I was obliged to sit in until the undercoat was sufficiently dry to allow the door to be closed.

While waiting, I continued my image cataloging in Lightroom and found this picture from April, 2004.

Heaven knows why I kept this hugely under-exposed picture, but I did. As an exercise, I decided to see what I could make of it; this is the end result.

I rather like it. I tried to think of something clever to say about tones, and textures and forms, but I couldn't.

I came across this fascinating little article on the BBC website. It describes how a team of scientists have attached RFID tags to bumblebees. The tags are so tiny that they don't impede the bees at all:

"These tags allow us to collect data from the bees without disturbing them and they help us to monitor a lot of bees simultaneously."

The story also gives me an excuse to pull this picture from 2003:

Sorry for the terrible pun in the subject line.

I'm still working on loading and keywording my image files into Lightroom. I invested some money and licensed a copy of the Controlled Vocabulary Keyword Catalog to help get me started. I've never really made a serious effort to catalogue the images before. I've dabbled with ThumbsPlus, which is a decent piece of software, but keeping the T+ database up to date was always an extra process that it was too easy not to do. The combination (that Lightroom offers) of library and develop function in the same tool seems to reduce the avoidance tendency. Over the last couple of days I've loaded several thousand images from 2002 and I decided to take the time to weed out some of the enormous amount of crap that I was insufficiently ruthless to ditch before. I read somewhere (can't recall the author) that amateur photographers (like me) are very poor at filtering the dross from the gold — we keep too many pictures that are almost OK. I know that's true for me. I'm never going to be as ruthless as a pro; after all some of the pictures are digital souvenirs to be kept even if they aren't perfectly framed or focused.

Anyway while working on my digital weeding, I came across this shot of Charlie the Fox (actually she's a vixen, but we didn't know that when we christened her):

We first met Charlie when we were clearing out a patch of overgrown shrubbery in the back garden of our old house: she was sleeping underneath a bush and there were clear signs of a den, which we rather wrecked in our clear-up. Amazingly, Charlie didn't seem at all perturbed by our presence and was quite happy to lie in the sun, so long as we didn't go too close. She was such a beautiful animal that we started putting out the left-overs for Charlie instead of in the garbage or down the waste disposal. After a while — sentimental suckers as we are — we bought dog biscuits (that's what Charlie's eating here, she's not doing a Winston Churchill impression ) and even doggy chocs. Girls like chocolate more than boys, and Charlie was no exception: while we never attempted to pet Charlie or touch her in any way, she would come and sit no more than 1m (3ft) away as I tossed doggy chocs to her.

Charlie (and some of her friends and family) visited almost daily for many months; I took loads of pictures — there are some more on my website: here and here. Sadly, one day they all just stopped coming. We suspected foul play (official or unofficial), but never found out what happened to them.

I've just noticed that Chris Breeze has released an update to his excellent Downloader Pro. Anyone who takes digital photographs and works on Windows should consider this program for downloading, organising and renaming images files. I've been using DL Pro since version 1, this release is 2.1.

Downloader Pro is highly recommended and not only by me.

Today's picture from the archives was taken back in April 2002 with my old D30:

My friend Steve recommended Project Honeypot. The website claims that it is a distributed system for identifying spammers and the spambots. Steve is a card-carrying geek and has installed the software on his own site. My modest technical expertise doesn't qualify me for geekdom and Fasthosts looks after my website and blog; so I have used the quicklink method. This involves inserting a link to a web address unique to my PH account that cannot be seen by a human browser, but can be picked up by a spambot. If spam results from this visit to the honeypot, it can be tracked to the IP address that originally visited the hidden link. What happens after that is a bit vague:

We collate, process, and share the data generated by your site with you. We also work with law enforcement authorities to track down and prosecute spammers.

Still, all in all, this seems like a good thing and the more people who participate the better.

One of the ongoing tasks I have set myself is to catalogue all my images using Lightroom. I've also noticed that the page looks a little boring without any pictures; so to close this post, I'm displaying one of the earliest pictures I made with a digital SLR. This was taken in San Francisco before I'd even discovered the benefits of shooting raw format: